Jamie Mueller is one of eight seminarians from Mundelein Seminary who recently traveled with CRS Ethiopia as part of the Global Fellows program. Here he shares his thoughts after a day visiting water projects.
Today we traveled to Adigrat, which is the northern region of Ethiopia. We had two main objectives on the agenda for the day: visit two CRS integrated watershed projects and meet with Abune Tesfaselassie Medhin, the Catholic Bishop of Adigrat.
It is hard to adequately describe the importance and communal impact of a watershed project. So far we have visited four, including the two today. All are different in their appearance and location, yet each has the vital effect of providing clean water for people and irrigation water for the farmers of the surrounding area.
Imagine all we do with water in a single day—and then imagine having that water disappear: No water to drink, to water plants, to wash, to feed the animals, to cook with. It is terrible when the water is shut off, but most people in the United States are confident their water will be turned back on within hours, let alone an entire day. Now imagine turning on your faucet and not knowing whether or not clean water would come out. What a nightmare both of these situations would be, and yet this is a daily reality for so many in Ethiopia—either the lack of clean water or no water at all.
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Posted
March 9th, 2010 in
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John Lindner |
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On March 8, 2010, CRS Kenya staff came together to celebrate International Women’s Day. Photo by Debbie DeVoe/CRS
CRS Kenya staff came together today to celebrate International Women’s Day. The men honored their female colleagues by sharing stories of important women in their lives and then offering words of appreciation to all of the women in attendance.
One staff member explained that in the culture of Kenya’s Pokot ethnic group, when a daughter is married, the groom’s family must give her father three cattle and her mother six, demonstrating the high value placed on a mother’s care. Another employee talked about how much he appreciates all mothers do: “The care in them, the hard work in them, the resilience in them, it’s great.”
To honor another special woman, staff agreed to visit the widow of David Muturi, a CRS Kenya driver who passed away unexpectedly last month. CRS Kenya extends its prayers and well wishes to David’s entire family on this special day.
— Reported by Debbie DeVoe, CRS’ regional information officer for eastern and southern Africa
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March 8th, 2010 in
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John Lindner |
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Catholic Relief Services has provided $50,000 to support the International Blue Crescent’s emergency response to the devastating earthquake that struck the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey.
The IBC is now responding with deliveries of food and hygiene materials. Over the next four months, it will continue to provide assistance to 500 of the some 2,000 families whose homes have been destroyed and are now being sheltered in tented camps. IBC, a long-standing partner of CRS, is already providing food, cooking utensils, and heaters with gas tubes to prevent hypothermia in what is one of the coldest regions in Turkey.
“It is great that IBC is already on the scene, and it pleases me that CRS is able to support IBC’s wonderful work,” said Mark Schnellbaecher, CRS regional director for Europe and the Middle East.
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March 8th, 2010 in
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John Lindner |
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By Liz O’Neill
I just returned from Haiti and can’t stop thinking about the 16-year-old who was quietly reading a book of poetry inside her family’s tent at the Petionville Golf Club. Shortly after the earthquake, she had returned to the heap of rubble that used to be her home and managed to salvage her poetry book from the ruins. Tattered and covered with dust from the debris, the poems were her comfort blanket in the crowded camp filled with displaced Haitians. She was at peace with her book, and looking forward to the day she could return to school.
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Posted
March 8th, 2010 in
Haiti by:
John Lindner |
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Recipients of a CRS shelter kit distribution line up to show their registration tickets – essential in any distribution to keep track of who will receive the items available. Photo by David Snyder for CRS
Of all things I have seen and photographed for aid agencies, distributions are always among the most interesting. It seems a simple thing in theory, to hand out the items people need in the wake of a crisis like the Haiti earthquake, but when you see one in action, you realize every detail must be carefully attended to.
Today CRS distributed shelter kits in the Petionville camp. It is the largest camp in Port-au-Prince—home to more than 40,000 people. That alone presents challenges, because unless you are distributing to every single person in the camp—a near impossibility with so large a site—some people simply will not be receiving items today. If you can image crowding into a camp of thousands, having lost everything and being nearly completely dependant on others to provide you with even the basics, you can imagine the tension in such a place when trucks show up with the tarps, nails, and rope you need to build a shelter.
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March 8th, 2010 in
Haiti by:
John Lindner |
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Jawanis, a 49-year-old widow who lost her arm in a farming accident, stands near the new home provided to her by CRS after an earthquake destroyed her house in Indonesia. Photo by CRS staff
As generous support pours in for Haiti, CRS is also continuing its response to a powerful quake that struck Indonesia in September 2009. CRS staffer Josephine Wijiastuti sends us this update about relief efforts six months after the quake:
Jawanis, 49 years old, is a widow who lives with her two sons and her mother. She is a farm laborer whose principal livelihood is collecting pinang (betel nut). Ten years ago, her arm was cut at the elbow in an accident with a rice-cutting machine; she lost the lower arm.
Jawanis received a cash grant to build her “pondok,” a small dwelling. She used the cash to purchase cement, wooden planks, metal sheeting, paint, plywood and labor; then she used materials salvaged from her quake-ruined home to complete the pondok. It took only 15 days to complete her pondok.
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March 8th, 2010 in
Indonesia by:
John Lindner |
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Lane Bunkers, CRS’ country representative in Ethiopia, talks about how programs like Operation Rice Bowl enable Catholics in the U.S. to contribute to much needed development programs in poor countries.
Rainfall patterns in Ethiopia are changing, much as they are all around the world. Previously, farmers could rely on two distinct rainy seasons each year but that’s not the case anymore. We’re also entering our third year of drought conditions which further complicates the growing cycles for these farmers.
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Posted
March 8th, 2010 in
Africa, Lent by:
John Lindner |
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Residents from the Chhatisdebil village in Orissa, India, hold a mock drill on disaster preparedness. Chhatisdebil is one of 75 villages along the highly vulnerable coastal belt of Orissa. The Community Based Disaster Preparedness Project, supported by Catholic Relief Services, assists villages in a comprehensive flood preparedness program. Photo by Amiran White for CRS
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Photo of the Week is a special feature for this blog, written by Kai Hill. |
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Derek Ho is one of eight seminarians from Mundelein Seminary who recently traveled with CRS Ethiopia as part of the Global Fellows program. Here he shares his thoughts during a day visiting water projects.
Being a Chinese American, no one can be confused that I am a stranger in this country. I am either really lost or I have a distinct purpose for being here. At this time, on this day, in this place, I wish I could say that I knew what my purpose was completely.
Questions about that purpose surface as I wonder what it would be like to live in such poor conditions. What did I do to deserve such riches in my life at home? What is it in my heart that keeps me from thanking God at every moment? What is God showing me or telling me and how should I respond? I only find consolation that God has a divine plan that He wishes to share with me. I know that my purpose in this life is to love, and Pope John Paul II rightly defined love as a “sincere gift of self.” But how?!
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Posted
March 5th, 2010 in
Africa by:
John Lindner |
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Catholic Relief Services logisitician, Shannon Oliver, at the Petionville Club camp Photo by Sara A. Fajardo/CRS
By Shannon Oliver and Sara A. Fajardo
I was in the middle of collecting food vouchers at a massive distribution of World Food Program rice when the three-star general arrived. It was my second week overseeing the delivery of relief supplies to needy Haitian families. I’d been assigned to manage food delivery in the Tabarre region, a large swath of urban sprawl on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
Typically my day begins at 4:30 a.m. when I hop in my car and set out to pick up volunteers and local government officials, who are key elements in any successful distribution. We begin early in order to deliver the food at a time of day when people are calmer, and also to give ourselves sufficient time to hand out vouchers for the following day’s distribution. Throughout the morning, I coordinate with the U.S. military and U.N. peacekeeping troops, who accompany us on these missions to help with such logistics as loading and unloading the food, monitoring for counterfeit vouchers and crowd aggression.
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Posted
March 5th, 2010 in
Haiti by:
John Lindner |
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